1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates in general to certain new and useful improvements in toy figures which are capable of taking in articles representative of play food so as to represent an eating of the play food articles.
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
There is a prior art toy apparatus including a plurality of buckets located on a conveyor line and in which a child-user introduces sand or similar substances into the buckets and which are dumped when the buckets reach an end of a conveyor line.
There are also many prior art dolls in which a liquid, such as water, can be introduced into a mouth opening on the head of the doll and in which the doll discharges the liquid in a representation of urinating. These so-called "urinating" dolls did not hold the liquid for later discharge; the liquid merely flowing through the doll from a mouth opening to and through a discharge opening.
There has also been a toy figure representative of a chicken and in which a child-user placed objects, such as toy eggs, within the chicken. When the child-user pushes on the chicken, or otherwise exerts pressure on the chicken, the eggs will pass out of the chicken.
There has also been a prior art doll representative of a baby in which a substance representative of food was introduced into a mouth opening on the doll. This substance was then discharged from the doll into a disposable diaper, representative of an excreting of the food substance by the doll. The food substance had a farily thin consistency, that is, it had a viscosity similar to or not substantially greater than water, so that it passed through the doll much in the same manner as water. This so-called "eating" doll operated much in the same manner as the urinating dolls in that the food substance was a liquid and merely passed through the doll from the mouth opening to a discharge opening. Furthermore, the food substance did not remain in the doll for any period of time, except for the time to flow through the doll. Moreover, a jaw portion on the head of this doll also shifted up and down to depict a chewing action when the food substance was introduced at a mouth opening. A battery operated motor caused the shifting action of the jaw portion. However, the jaw action was merely an amusement feature and was not operable with any portion of the food substance flow system.
The present invention provides a toy animal figure which is capable of taking solid or relatively solid play food articles when introduced at the mouth opening, conveying the food articles to an interior portion of the animal figure and storing the food articles until later removed by a child user. Thus, the toy animal figure of this invention provides a fairly realistic representation of the animal figure eating the food articles.